Security systems often employ the use of a glass breakage detector in order to sense if glass may be broken in a protected space, such as a commercial establishment or residential dwelling. Glass breakage detectors typically use acoustic sensors that detect acoustic waves that occur as a result of an acoustic event, digitize the sensed acoustic waves, and then process the digitized signals to determine if the characteristics of the acoustic waves are indicative of a glass breakage event (e.g. a window pane breaking). If the detector determines that the sensed acoustic signals occurred as a result of glass breakage, then an alarm signal is generated and transmitted to the security system control panel for further processing, such as sounding local alarm, notifying a central station monitoring service, etc.
False alarms are a problem in the security industry. Although it is simple to ascertain which detector created the alarm signal, it is more difficult to determine what event or sequence of events caused that detector to declare the alarm condition. With particular regard to glass breakage detectors, it could be one of many sources, and troubleshooting the site and modifying the installation to improve the performance can be guesswork. Thus, it is desired to be able to study the characteristics of the signals that caused the occurrence of the glass breakage alarm, in particular to record and later reproduce the acoustic waves that are determined by the glass breakage detector to be the result of glass breakage.